


Longer Still

by delighted



Series: Longer [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Continuation, Follow up, M/M, season eight related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 16:39:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12413940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delighted/pseuds/delighted
Summary: Follow up to“Longer Than You’d Like.”Steve shows up at Danny’s. Fortunately, he has the keys for Danny’s place, too.





	Longer Still

**Author's Note:**

  * For [those who asked for more](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=those+who+asked+for+more).



> Wellll, this is probably not what you had in mind when you asked for a sequel, but it’s what the boys gave me.... And I kinda fell in love with it. I hope you do, too. :-)
> 
> * tiny note of warning for mild anxiety/panic type stuff *

Right on the dot of seven, Danny’s doorbell rang. Of course Steve would be fucking punctual. Danny, on the other hand, had found himself something of an emotional disaster. As cool as he’d felt, walking out of “Steve’s,” about half way home a strange panic had set in, and he’d begun doubting everything. Like, literally, everything. It started with a causal _Huh, I wonder what one wears on a first date with one’s best friend of eight years whom one has secretly been in love with for nearly that long?_ And somehow, that simple question had induced some kind of freak out. Hard to imagine, right? I mean, suddenly faced with the prospect of everything he’d wanted (and everything he’d been too afraid to risk) Danny’d kinda crumbled. So when that doorbell rang at seven p.m. precisely, Danny was not shiny and sharp and ready. Danny was a mess on the floor of his bedroom.

But “Steve’s” weren’t the only keys Danny’s partner had. He also had keys to Danny’s house—had ever since that time Danny’d been too sick to answer his phone or his door and in a dramatic fit of worry, Steve had broken down Danny’s front door. Fortunately, Steve was level-headed enough tonight to remember he had those keys, so when Danny didn’t come to the door, and he didn’t pick up his phone, Steve simply unlocked the door and walked in.

Danny was already having a hard enough time with the breathing, thank you, so seeing Steve—who had taken Danny’s words to heart and had dressed in that swaggery James-Bond-just-hanging-out, black slacks, crisp white shirt, and actual dress shoes—the way that always went directly to Danny’s ability to function and crushed it like a vise. Only, well, that was just... _weird_. For some reason, tonight it seemed to actually help. Or maybe it was the look on Steve’s face: not of panic or concern, but of absolute understanding. If Danny hadn’t already been breathless, he’d have stopped breathing.

Kicking off his shoes in the doorway, Steve came and sat on the floor next to Danny.

“Hey, buddy. Finally hit you, huh?”

Danny looked up at Steve, from his veritable ball of I-don’t-even-know on the floor, thinking his eyes were surely wild and dazed and several other things as well. He didn’t know what to say, but that didn’t seem to faze Steve, who just settled more comfortably on the floor as though sitting on the floor with his partner, while dressed up for a date with said partner, was something he ordinarily did. It would have done Danny’s head in at the best of times. Tonight, he found it soothing.

“You wanna talk about it, Danno?” Steve asked. When Danny didn’t respond, Steve nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna talk to you, then, Danno, alright? And if you want me to stop, you just punch me or something, okay?” He looked in Danny’s eyes, and evidently felt he was agreeing, though Danny was certain he couldn’t have given any kind of look other than pure befuddlement.

“So. Not quite as simple as you’d thought, huh buddy, the idea of us? It’s a tangled mess, isn’t it? But you know, I guess that’s okay too, because we’re just kind of like that, aren’t we, you and me? Always have been, you know. And I guess I’d just always been alright with it because life is crazy and messy, and that’s what I’ve been used to since I was young, so that just fit right in and I was able to deal. But you, with the planning and the future, buddy, that’s something else completely, and no one’s ever wanted that with me.”

Steve paused, the longest stretch of words Danny thought he’d ever heard from him burning through Danny’s blood like some kind of crazy fire. Then, swallowing and nodding his head, Steve blinked his eyes, cleared his throat, and continued.

“Ahh, and I’d given up thinking anyone would, especially with this whole thing,” he gestured to his body, as if it were somehow its fault, about the poisoning. Which, Danny realized, was probably exactly how Steve felt. “But instead of backing away from me, you push forward. Closer, Danny. Closer. And you know, it made me a complete mess for one day, but once I got past that....” He trailed off, with a kind of bemused laugh, like there was some kind of secret joke he was remembering. “Once I got over myself, I saw that it didn’t matter, that being with you would be worth it, no matter what it ended up meaning. And yeah, I knew you’d find out. That I love you. That I have loved you, for probably a lot longer than is really okay. But it didn’t matter. Because even if you split my heart into a million pieces, it would be worth it. And that doesn’t begin to make sense to me, but I know it’s true.”

He smiled. At least, he tried to smile. It looked crooked and awkward and pained, and it was exquisite.

“So, Danny, you’re entitled to be a mess on the floor for a day, buddy. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to stay here with you, okay? And if that’s all we do tonight, it’ll still be the best damn date I’ve ever been on.”

Tears were blurring Danny’s vision by this point, and Steve was sniffling, and they sat there like that for a good long while. But slowly, Danny could breathe again, and slowly, he stretched out of his ball-of-terror a bit, into a more relaxed position on the floor, and Steve grinned, lopsidedly, and so dang fondly—and it was, Danny realized, an expression he’d seen so many times he couldn’t count, and it had always puzzled him, that Steve had that much fondness for him. But now he got it, not even in his heart, but somewhere closer to his gut. Just some deep down understanding of something he’d always somehow known without really getting it.

“That was the most amazing bunch of words you’ve ever used,” Danny finally managed.

Steve’s face lit up even more. Full-on classic Steve smirk. “Thanks, buddy.”

“This was hardly the date I had in mind....”

“Nothing about us has ever been what I had in mind, so that’s probably just about perfect.”

Danny chuckled softly. “You might have a point there, babe.”

“I know I do, Danny. There’s no book here. There’s no procedure. There’s no by the rules, okay? It’s messy and it’s probably half crazy, but none of that matters, alright?”

“Doesn’t it?”

Steve raised an eyebrow at Danny in response. “You really gonna care about any of that? With everything....” He gestured vaguely as if to encompass eight years of stuff, too much to even begin to recount. “Really, at this point, Danny, nothing could bother me. Nothing could....”

He paused, shaking his head, and looked down at Danny, and the expression on his face now was not one Danny’d seen before, and it didn’t take his breath away, it didn’t still him, it didn’t go straight through his heart, it was more that it was the opposite of all of that—it gave him that thing that had always felt just out of his reach, his whole life, that absolutely sold connection, that utterly unshakable foundation, and it lifted something in his heart he hadn’t known _could_ be lifted. And flashes of fourteen conversations with Steve about negativity and pessimism and gloom and darkness passed suddenly though his veins as though leaving him, and what he realized was that this was what he’d had all along. They both had. They’d just both been too stupid to see it, to really see it. And something shifted then, and he still couldn’t move from his place on the floor, but he knew he would, and he knew it would be amazing, and that was kind of everything.

Danny smiled—weakly, he knew, but it was a start. Steve returned the look, and then he laid down on the floor across from Danny, mirroring his position, looking into his eyes, just being there, in that moment.

Slowly, after a while, they reached out hands, across the space between them, and when they met and their fingers twined together, Danny’s breathing calmed, and he felt a wash of comfort over him, and he knew it would be like everything with Steve—crazy and unpredictable, and probably dangerous and explosive. But also magical and beautiful beyond anything he could imagine. And it was, of course, next to impossible for Danny to feel he deserved that. But somehow he knew Steve wouldn’t let that stop them. After all, he never had before. Not when it came to his partner... not when it came to Danny. And maybe, finally, Danny would stop fighting that, and let him, really let him in.

Steve smiled as if he’d understood, and he squeezed Danny’s hand. “I love you, buddy. I always have.”

Danny nodded. “I know, babe. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this satisfied the need for “more”... if not, go on and ask for more again, I can always see what else the boys have to say.... And, I’ve fallen behind with my other-fandom-story, but hope to get it done and be back to longer things for the boys very soon!


End file.
